CALIFORNIA

PREFACE

An Introductory Course in Argumentation has grown out of my need of a text-book presenting the subject of brief-drawing and argumentative composition in so elementary a manner as to make it practical for a short composition course for college freshmen. My endeavor has been to simplify the subject to suit the understanding of students in the first years of college, or the last years of secondary school, without lessening its educative value.

In the first place, the student is practiced in the processes of argumentation without the added difficulty of research. No teacher of narration begins his work by demanding that a student write a historical romance requiring serious preliminary study of the period in which it is placed — he begins, rather, with simple pieces of work exercising the student's power of imagination on material that lies within his experience. The beginner in the study of argumentation should, in like manner, be set to work to exercise his reasoning power on familiar material. This is not a loss, but a gain. Even advanced students, when allowed to write at the start on subjects upon.

AUĜHORLIA

PREFACE

which they must "read up," develop little power to argue; they too often count their work done when they have gathered from a book and summarized the arguments of another. The student required to argue on material already at his command finds pleasure in turning it over, seeing it in new lights, in new relations, with new significance, and argument seems to him serviceable and pleasant work. I do not, however, advocate suiting endeavor to power, and at the close of the course the student is instructed in methods of research with the expectation that he will be ready to encounter added difficulties.

The subject is further simplified by leaving persuasion out of consideration until the student understands conviction. This, too, is a gain; the student who begins by suiting his argument to the hearer too often comes to value sophistry above thoroughness and accuracy; like a sharp bargainer he prides himself more on a fraudulent victory than on an honest one. With him specious reasoning and "bluff” are at a premium, and to outwit and circumvent his antagonist by fair means or foul, to "make a case," is his unscholarly ideal. The student whose interest is first enlisted in making a strong argument, can afterward be brought to see the importance of presenting it with tact and economy, without danger of confusing sound argument with mere tricks of oratory.

The instructor will find that simplification has been

effected without evasion of difficulties. While the course is intended to be as simple as possible, it is not intended to permit any otiose imitation of the form of argument without the substance. The difficulties are not slighted; they are taken by easy stages, and every point is clinched by drill in exercises hard enough to stimulate the average student to vigorous work. The two methods in use in teaching argumentation, the brief-drawing method and the syllogistic method, naturally assist and complement each other. My aim has been to combine these methods so that the one will help the student to understand the other.

While the course calls for a sustained piece of work, its preparation and criticism by installments are provided for, so that there is no dearth of work during the course and no accumulation of work at its close.

course.

A good course in elementary argumentation should be introduced into every high school composition There is no form of discourse that will do so much to break a student of hand-to-mouth writing and thinking, that will so give him the habit of looking beyond his nose, of doing work in a purposeful way, with a sense of the relation of parts, of the structure of the whole composition. It facilitates development out of the acquisitive, transmitting stage into reflective, modifying, originating power.

Acknowledgment is due Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Company for permission to use certain copyrighted material; also to the Century Company for the selection from N. S. Shaler's American Highways; to Charles Scribner's Sons for the selections from Thompson Seton's Wild Animals I have Known, and Richard Harding Davis's Gallegher and Other Stories; and to Small, Maynard & Company for the selection from Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Stetson's In this Our World.